Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is “not
sure” whether he supports the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
The 50-year-old Paul, a self-described
libertarian leaning Republican, told Bryan Fischer, spokesman for the
Christian conservative American Family Association (AFA), that he
feared federal recognition of the legal marriages of gay and lesbian
couples would signal the end of the battle over marriage equality in
America.
“I believe in traditional marriage,”
Paul
said during an appearance on Fischer's radio show. “I really
don't understand any other kind of marriage. … I just don't think
it's good for us to change the definition of that.”
“So what about DOMA?” Fischer
asked.
“In Kentucky, you know, we passed a
constitutional amendment to say that marriage is between a man and a
woman. So I think that is the right of the states and that's where
it originates and really I think the federal government shouldn't get
involved with telling the states that they can't pass these laws.”
“Now what DOMA does though senator at
the federal level is it does define marriage for federal purposes as
the union of one man and one woman. Do you support that?”
“You know it's kind of tricky and I'm
not sure exactly how I come down on the federalization part,” Paul
answered. “I have said before in the past and I continue to
maintain that we should try to keep it as a state issue. My fear is
that in federalizing it we are going to lose the battle for the whole
country and keeping it state by state, which is the way marriage has
always been adjudicated, that we'll still have areas that will
continue to have traditional marriage. I think we are losing in
large areas of the country now. But you know if the urban centers
are able to dictate for the rest of the country what our definition
on marriage is, I'm a little concerned about that so I've really
thought that we ought to keep it as a state issue.” (The video is
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Paul is considered a possible candidate
for president in 2016.